Tag Archives: women

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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It’s Ada Lovelace Day, a good day to celebrate women in technology careers!

If you don’t know who Ada Lovelace is, check out this wonderful Science Chicks blog post.

She was the first computer programmer. Not the first woman programmer, the first programmer, and she did it without having a computer to program anything on. She wrote for Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was still theoretical.

Incidentally, until I started keeping an eye on Science Chicks, I had no idea there were so many women scientists throughout history.

I wish they’d been in the curriculum when I was in school; I might have ended up in quite a different field altogether, or at least, I might have a stronger science journalism background now.

Hire a Woman? Terrible Idea!

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Australia’s National Archives have put up a relic of sexism from the nation’s Department of Trade describing why exactly it would be such a terrible idea to have a woman serve as an assistant trade commissioner.

For one thing, she would, of course, age. And that’s terrible.

“… such an appointee would not stay young and attractive for ever and later on could well become a problem.”

Wow. I had no idea that women are only a problem when they get old!

And “A spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years. A man usually mellows.”

There are some less stupid objections to hiring a woman on the list as well, such as the likelihood that a woman would get married and then quit (which women often did at the time), and that women are not allowed in men’s clubs, making socializing more difficult. It’s a good thing some of these societal things have changed, and it’s a shame more haven’t.

It’s a sad testament to how things were back then, and it’s also a great explanation of why it was so darn hard for women to get into some fields.

Thanks to BoingBoing for posting the link.

Alarming Trends, and Mr. Rogers

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I never watched much children’s television as a child. At a young age I considered myself too old for a lot of TV shows, such as Sesame Street, because it seemed to be trying to teach me letters and numbers when I could already read and count. And books were far more interesting than television, too.

It occurs to me now I may have missed something good. Mr. Rogers, at least, seemed to be a pretty cool guy. Now someone has remixed some pieces of his show, added autotune, and made a wonderful little song about growing ideas in the “garden of your mind.”

I’m not big on video, but I do have another short clip–a very alarming video of a person wandering up to a volcano to take samples of the bubbling lava lake. This volcanologist survives the experience, but I have to wonder, isn’t this the sort of thing that is obviously stupid? It seems like a Louis Slotin waiting to happen, frankly.

Do we need to put up a sign that says “Do not taunt happy fun volcano”?

And some more links:

  • Here are some more reactions to the “MEN invented the internet” piece.
  • People will kill each other over just about anything, including, apparently, ice cream. The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were a real thing.
  • The same things people say about those terrible video games is the same thing they used to say about those terrible television programs, those terrible movies, and those terrible books. We all know this, but sometimes it helps to have a reminder.
  • Video games have a peculiar way of telling you a task is urgent and then diverting you away from it with other tasks called “side quests.” While this is typical of a modern work day, when you’re an adventurer tasked with saving the world, it seems a bit weird. Play this tiny, five-minute game. You won’t regret it. (via BoingBoing)

The Brogrammer Problem: Keeping Geekery a Boys’ Club

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“Men invented the internet! Because they were men! And manly! And they were geeks but they were male geeks! Because that’s what a geek is! A man!”

Okay, that’s not actually what the New York Times article says, not even close. But it certainly seems to imply it, and in the second paragraph it seems to imply that the MEN who invented the Internet are the only ones who are going to be involved in its future. Because, you know. They’re MEN.

What it really says is this:

MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.

But are these men trapped in the past even as they create the future?

This prompted Xeni Jardin to get a bit ranty on BoingBoing (includes cursing, including the F-bomber, so be warned), but not, I think, without justification.

Part of the reason is probably that we girl geeks hear this sort of thing all the time–casting doubt on our capabilities because of our gender, and denying us a seat at the geek table. Women in technology get hit especially hard.

And you can’t deny that the opening paragraph in that story indicates that nerds and geeks have to be men. I guess someone should have told that to all the people who mocked me using those terms when I was a kid, huh? “Oh, she’s a girl, not a geek.”

News flash: If you were gonna make a Venn diagram, “Female” and “Geek” would overlap quite a bit, thank you very much.

Apparently this sort of thing is becoming a problem in Silicon Valley lately, with the rise of the “brogrammer.”

Urban Dictionary has a couple of definitions of “bro” but here’s one: “An alpha male idiot. This is the derogatory sense of the word (common usage in the western US): white, 16-25 years old, inarticulate, belligerent, talks about nothing but chicks and beer, drives a jacked up truck that’s plastered with stickers, has rich dad that owns a dealership or construction business and constantly tells this to chicks at parties…”

A “bro” is not a good thing to be.

Protip: Most women actually find bros repulsive. And quite a few men do too.

(Incidentally, who doesn’t idolize Mr. Spock?)

Fake and Real Geek Girls

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Tara Tiger Brown, a writer for Forbes, has launched a stunning attack on what she considers to be “fake” geek girls. Note that this is specifically addressed not to fake geeks, but to fake geek girls.

Apparently only females are trying to pass themselves off as geeks. Or maybe it’s totally all right for males to do so, but not females.

I’m a little bit bewildered by Brown’s article. I was always a geek girl in school. I was unpopular and I read a lot of books. I don’t think Brown would consider me a “real” geek, though, because I was not a science/tech geek. I was (and am) a literature/pop culture geek.

Brown’s definition of geek excludes me.

This is a little odd. In junior high and high school I was on the knowledge bowl team, a group of people who would play trivia games against teams from other schools, a very geeky pursuit. Our team included a math geek, a science geek and two literature/culture geeks. We were all geeks together, and by our powers combined, well, we were pretty much Captain Geek.

I wasn’t somehow less of a geek because I’d read “The Merchant of Venice” instead of Richard Feynman. And none of my geek friends treated me any different, although sometimes they would have to explain mathematical concepts in terms a six-year-old would understand for me. That was okay. I was pretty happy to explain the plot of “Count of Monte Cristo” to them as if they hadn’t read a book not about computers since they were 6, so it all evened out.

I still don’t read comics, and I still don’t really play video games. And I’m still a geek from a family of geeks. My dad happens to be a theology geek, and my mom is a literature geek, thank you very much.

It’s a little sad that someone would be less accepting of different types of geeks now than people were in 1989.

We should have less diversity in geekdom? Really? You, Tara Tiger Brown, a female geek, are really arguing that?

And plenty of other people agree with me, too.

Exploding Manure, Insidious Weeds and a Geek in Power

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Here are a few things you might find to be of general interest:

Defending Sexual Harassment

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I had no idea there were actually people who would defend sexual harassment.

Maybe I’m a little naive, but I really believe most people aren’t deliberately being sexist jerks when they make fun of a man for knitting, or a woman for working on an oil rig. There are these cultural norms, ya know? They get embedded in your head whether you want them to or not. You have to fight against your own sexism sometimes, and sometimes, you slip.

And while the gaming communities I’ve been a part of have been majority-male, they’ve been fair and decent.

By contrast, there’s this ugly incident in which a gamer actually defended sexual harassment and said it was “part of the culture.” Worse, this person was supposed to be coaching a team of gamers, one of whom was female. She was shouted down when she tried to protest, and she was told to “let the man speak.”

This incident, and how people reacted to it, goes well beyond the vague feeling that booth babes are creepy, or that the gaming community should be, in general, nicer and less sexist.

Yes, free speech in America means you can say just about anything you want. This person has every right to his opinion, and every right to state it.

And other people have every, every right to be horrified by his sexist, creepy behavior, call him out on it, and try to stop it through civilized means. That’s what real communities do, whether online or in meatspace.

Booth Babes: Living in a Geek Boys’ World, Part 2

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Look, it’s pretty girls in tight clothing at a tech trade show!

Now tell me what product they’re selling. Or whether it matters.

I’ve never been to a trade show, like the one shown at left, or to a convention. I would very much like to. At the same time, the prevalence of so-called “booth babes” would be off-putting to me. These women are typically models hired for the day to hang around a booth hawking a product. Because they’re only there for the day, their knowledge about said product is generally pretty sketchy, and the women are really only there to get people to the booth.

If there are male booth babes, I haven’t ever heard of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. That said, the term is generally understood to refer to the female of the species.

The photo above is from a great post by Glenn Fleishman, who wrote a piece detailing the problem. (Check it out.) Do booth babes attract enough people to make it worth repelling other people?

I’m not just talking about women here–the audience for this particular trade show is apparently about 60-40 male/female split. Some men avoid booths with booth babes because they feel uncomfortable around them. They might feel uncomfortable with that level of objectification, or they may simply dislike being blatantly manipulated. Some people feel companies that hire booth babes are sleazy.

And yes, it can make women feel uncomfortable, too.

Is that any different from hiring attractive people on a permanent basis and putting them in ordinary (but still attractive) business attire?

I’m just wondering if booth babes might not be counterproductive in the long run, especially given that 40 percent of the intended audience is female anyway. And it seems that more and more women are making technology purchasing decisions.

Living in a Geek Boys’ World

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I’m not really a girl gamer, because I’m not truly a gamer. I play video games, but only a very few of them, and most of them, I use more as a venue for socializing and storytelling than as games.

Much has been made, however, of the gaming world’s treatment of women and minorities–often sexist, homophobic and creepy. And when that’s pointed out, the reaction is generally squelching of criticism. There’s a good post on Kotaku about the subject, and of course there’s also an immediate attempt to crush the criticism in the comments, and an ensuing flame war.

I’ve noticed a bit of a trend in these articles. While I agree with their main point–generally, something along the lines of “the gaming community needs to be less sexist, homophobic and creepy” — I do want to emphasize that these articles often assume that there is any such thing as “the gaming community.”

It’s a catch-all term, casting a very wide net over a very diverse set of games that appeal to very diverse gamers. It’s a bit like using the term “media,” which not only includes Fox news and CNN but also Saveur magazine and the Jackson Pilot, as well as Disney and blogs about the WWE. Is there really anything meaningful and yet true that you can say about “the media,” keeping that in mind?

The “gaming community” is a little similar to that. I’m not even talking about the way people marginalize casual games as “not real gaming.” I’m talking about what people normally consider the gaming community.

While I have watched plenty of games and heard talk about “raping” and various homophobic and sexist slurs, I have also played plenty of games myself where that kind of behavior is rare and frowned upon when it does happen. It didn’t happen to me a lot when I played Aion. It didn’t happen to me a lot when I played City of Heroes either.

It’s not happening to me much now that I play the Star Wars game “The Old Republic.”

In fact, I have a female character at level 35, and she’s been fully clothed like a normal woman (well, Jedi do wear robes, so maybe not that normal) for about 34 and 1/2 levels, and even during that half-level where she had a questionable outfit, it actually looked more like what someone would wear to go jogging on a hot day than something a prostitute would wear.

What’s sad about that is how unusual that is. I have a woman character who isn’t dressed like a bimbo and this was a remarkable thing. In fact, most of the women characters in TOR seem to be fairly well-covered, with the exception of, well. Exotic dancers. Who still wear more clothes than some of the armored fighter women in Aion.

The gaming community does need to get better, but generalizing about “the gaming community” as if it were one place with one type of people in it isn’t really a very good idea.

There are bad pockets within the gaming community and even within each individual game. There are also good pockets, though–I know several groups that make sure not just women and ethnic minorities but also gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are welcome.

My gaming communities are pretty good, overall. The few jerks are more than counterbalanced by the quiet majority of nice, polite, friendly people, many of whom are, in fact, women. We’re a growing group in the larger “gaming community,” whatever that really is.

Of course, if my gaming communities weren’t pretty good, I wouldn’t stick with them. What fun would that be?